Living With Essential Tremor

How does essential tremor affect a person's job performance?

People with essential tremor in their hands do find that it can have consequences on their work. Their handwriting can be difficult for other people to read. They may not be able to write as quickly and as efficiency as they had in the past. Sometimes, when people have a really pronounced tremor they may have difficulty controlling a mouse. They might be clicking on a mouse for a computer knowing that they don't mean to or moving the mouse around and they don't intend to. It could conceivably have an impact on one's work performance.

How do drugs and alcohol affect essential tremor?

The consumption of stimulants in one's diet - things like caffeine - could have an impact on essential tremor by increasing it temporarily. Also, alcohol has an effect on many people, who have essential tremor, in the sense that it dampens it down. It improves the tremor, at least transitively and temporarily. Now, sometimes, the people who find that alcohol improves the tremor, when the effect of alcohol wears off they get a rebound effect: that the tremor is temporarily increased from the alcohol-wearing-off rebound effect.

Should people with essential tremor drive?

People with essential tremor may find that the tremor could interfere with their driving. This is in the sense that their hands are shaking, which could make it more difficult to hold onto the steering wheel, for example. If their leg is affected, they could notice a rhythmic pressing on the gas pedal, causing the car to move accordingly. Medications that are used to treat essential tremor could have an impact on driving because some of them are sedating, and could have an impact on alertness which could of course affect safe driving.

What is the hardest part of living with essential tremor?

The hardest part of living with essential tremor is simply the impact it has on daily activities like eating and writing. This is very troubling to some people with essential tremor. Standing in the checkout line with the pressure of people in the line behind them and trying to write that check and shaking, or going to a restaurant and feeling self-conscious about their hand shaking while they're trying to eat a bowl of soup.